Willits bypass route remains an area of conflict

Trucks carrying 120 foot long steel pipes about 24 inches in diameter arrived in the Little Lake Valley on Monday. These trucks carried the first six of nearly 1,500 similar pipes expected to be used for piles to support the bridges and viaduct in the Highway 101 bypass around Willits.

The trucks parked in the Willits Skate Park parking lot for hours waiting for CalTrans to offload them. Hearst-Willits Road had to be closed for some time to allow CalTrans to maneuver these pipes from city and county property onto CalTrans property. The pipes/piles are about as long as the distance between home plate and second base in a major league baseball field.

Several protesters held a large banner on the side of the highway during the transfer operations. One protester, Sara Grusky, one of the founders of Save Little Lake Valley was arrested for failing to leave the county roadway when ordered by California Highway Patrol and CalTrans.

CHP costs to guard the CalTrans workers and equipment as of April 26 had reached $320,000 according to CalTrans spokesman Phil Frisbie. This calculates to about $9,000 per day since the CHP arrived in force March 21.

The cost does not include the April 2 massive CHP enforcement action to remove five tree sitters. CalTrans doesn't have the bill for this operation, yet, according to Frisbie. With significant police presence still obvious on the work site, the CHP costs have likely grown to more than $500,000 since the protests began.

The large crane needed to drive the six test piles failed to arrive as scheduled this past weekend due to transportation issues, according to Frisbie. The crane was slated to cross a state highway bridge in another county to get to Willits but now cannot use it due to a recent reduction in the bridge's maximum load limit, says Frisbie.

Several of the crane sections are now being stored on CalTrans property near Hearst-Willits Road. CalTrans had expected to assemble the crane and begin pounding in the first pile by as early as today.

The large pieces of equipment used to install wick drains, called stitchers, are facing similar transportation problems.

These transportation issues have already delayed the start of pile driving and wick drain installation.

Earlier on Monday, Bob Chevalier, 68, a retired salmon fisherman and current Willits resident, was arrested on the south end of the bypass construction. He chained himself to a railing on a piece of earthmoving equipment. Although Chevalier used a special "lock box" designed to make it difficult to separate man from machine, the contractor just unbolted the rail from the equipment and Chevalier was promptly arrested for trespassing.

Ellen Faulkner, 75, of Redwood Valley, was arrested again Monday for trespassing. This is Faulkner's fourth bypass-related arrest.

The current tree sitter protesting the Willits bypass project is Travis "Eagle/Condor" Jochimsen, 30, of Lancaster. Jochimsen was one of the original five Willits bypass tree sitters arrested April 2. His new oak tree perch is visible from Highway 101 near Upp Creek along the northern sector of the bypass route. Jochimsen has prior experience as a tree sitter, pleading no contest in August 2011 to a single count of trespassing. Jochimsen and three others climbed into a grove of oak trees in January 2011 in Los Angeles County to stop the trees from being removed to make way for a debris dump.

In 2002, Jochimsen climbed the 400-year-old-oak tree nicknamed "Old Glory" in support of a tree sitter who's protest forced a developer to spend $1 million to move the tree to a park rather than cut it down to widen a road.